Alfred Hitchcock presents Opening Night

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AlfredHitchcockAt long enough last came Opening Day. Well, Opening Night. On which New York Yankees right fielder Aaron Judge nailed the COVID-19 delayed season’s first hit and his teammate Giancarlo Stanton nailed its first home run two batters later.

On which the Washington Nationals opened without a key element, outfielder Juan Soto, whose positive COVID-19 test result came back well enough before game time to make him a scratch.

Before that rain-shortened game even got started, the word came from the opposite coast that Clayton Kershaw was scratched from his Opening Night start thanks to a back problem sending him onto the injured list.

In Washington, the Nats’ co-ace Max Scherzer would have loved if Judge and Stanton were Thursday night scratches. They accounted for all Yankee runs in the 4-1 final shortened in the top of the sixth when the rains smashed in with the Yankees having first and third and one out.

In San Francisco, Los Angeles Dodgers rookie Dustin May pitched five innings to San Francisco Giants veteran Johnny Cueto’s four, both men leaving with a one-all tie, and the Dodgers’ new $396 million man Mookie Betts broke the tie scoring on an infield ground out in the top of the seventh.

Scherzer’s good news Thursday night: eleven strikeouts. His bad news: four walks and an inability to solve Judge and Stanton. Judge also doubled home Tyler Wade in the third and Stanton singled home Gio Urshela in the fifth. Remove Judge and Stanton from the Yankee lineup and the Nats’ Adam Eaton’s hefty solo home run in the bottom of the first would have been the game’s only score.

Betts singled with one out in the top of the seventh and called for the ball. Published reports indicate that ball plus the evening’s official lineup card now repose in his home. “It’s just a new chapter in life,” he told reporters after the 8-1 Dodgers win.

After he came home when Justin Turner grounded into a force out, Corey Seager’s grounder got Cody Bellinger caught in a rundown at the plate, but Enrique Hernandez singled home Turner and Seager (who’d taken second during the rundown), Joc Pederson and A.J. Pollock walked back-to-back to load the pads, Austin Barnes sent Hernandez home with an infield hit, and Max Muncy walked Pederson home.

And, on both coasts, all four teams figured out a solution to the issue of whether or not to take a knee for “The Star Spangled Banner” that might actually help more than hurt the too-easily outraged.

Abetted by a suggestion from Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Andrew McCutchen, the Yankees and the Nats lined up on the base lines holding a long, long, long black ribbon, standing apart enough for social distance, then took their knees before “The Star Spangled Banner” was played.

On the same suggestion, the Dodgers and the Giants held a similar long, black ribbon and took their knees before the anthem’s playing. In Washington, both the Yankees and the Nats rose from their knees while the anthem was played. In San Francisco, ten Giants including manager Gabe Kapler plus Betts on the Dodgers’ side stayed on their knees during the anthem, with Bellinger and Muncy putting hands on Betts’s shoulder as a gesture of support.

I went back on record Thursday saying that there are far worse ways than kneeling before a national anthem to protest something you think is dead wrong. Kneeling, as two Scientific American writers I cited remind us, is anything except disrespect.

“While we can’t know for sure, kneeling probably derives from a core principle in mammalian nonverbal behavior: make the body smaller and look up to show respect, esteem, and deference,” wrote psychologists Jeremy Adam Smith and Dacher Keltner in 2017.  “. . . Kneeling can also be a posture of mourning and sadness. It makes the one who kneels more vulnerable. In some situations, kneeling can be seen as a request for protection.”

I’ll ask again: Would you rather those outraged by rogue police doing murder against black or any people raise clenched fists, burn a flag on the field, or start a riot with or without looting and plundering in the bargain? Neither would I. But if only now-former football quarterback Colin Kaepernick had thought in the first place to take his original knee before the anthem played, would that have worked very differently for himself and the outraged?

Let me repeat, too, that you don’t have to subscribe to every last clause or every last impulse of the social justice warriors to agree that rogue police doing murder is not what the land of the free and the home of the brave was supposed to mean. Neither must you subscribe to the formal Black Lives Matter movement itself to agree that black lives and all lives don’t deserve to end when those entrusted to uphold the law break it instead.

Let me repeat further that it’d be far better for baseball to limit playing “The Star Spangled Banner” to before games on Opening Days, games played on significant national holidays, the All-Star Game, and Games One and (if it goes that far) Seven of the World Series. Not so much to cut back on the kneeling protests but to re-emphasise that patriotism compulsory is patriotism illusory.

Back on the field, Soto’s COVID-19 positive test approaching Opening Night shook the game up just enough to provoke serious questions as to how MLB is going to navigate even this truncated season without further medical issues. And, whether the most stringent health and safety protocols will keep more Sotos from turning up positive.

Other surrealities include the empty stands, other than cardboard cutouts of fans in the seats, and the canned crowd sounds at the ballparks. The coronavirus world tour already turned baseball into something between The Twilight Zone and the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Now that the season is underway at last, should we throw Alfred Hitchcock Presents into the mix?

At least neither Opening Night game went to extra innings, so we didn’t have to deal right off the bat with the free cookie on second base awarded each team to start its extra half-inning. The mischief that’ll inspire will just have to wait.

Funny thing, though, about that equally nefarious three-batter minimum for pitchers. Two Giants relievers faced the minimum in that five-run Dodger seventh before surrendering any runs. If bullpen preservation was part of it even if those two got pried, I can see already that this dumb rule isn’t going to end well for Kapler and other managers.

And, let’s be real, the PA people in charge of the piped-in sounds are only human, after all. Who’s going to be the first poor sap having to live down the accident of cranking up the wild cheering when the home team’s batter gets hit by a pitch?

On the other hand, it was easy enough to feel normal again once the Yankees and the Nats got underway . . . when home plate umpire Angel Hernandez began blowing pitch calls. Calling a few strikes balls and a few balls strikes? That’s about par for the course for him. So when’s that umpire accountability coming at last?

Before the game, Dr. Anthony Fauci—otherwise doing his best to battle a pandemic involving both a stubborn virus and a political (lack of) class that surely makes him wonder if he was really there when all this happened—threw out a ceremonial first pitch. Later, he was seen in the stands with his Nats-themed face mask off his face a spell. What’s up with that, Doc?

You’d love to say Fauci threw a perfect strike to Nats relief pitcher Sean Doolittle behind the plate, but you’d be lying like an office holder. Fauci’s delivery is described politely as resembling a man trying to compensate for a fractured upper arm. The ball sailed almost to the on-deck circle. Rumour has it that Hernandez called it a strike on the outside corner.

Oh, say, can’t you see?

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Giants Anthem Baseball

“I see nothing more patriotic than peaceful protests when things are frustrating and upsetting,” says San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler about some of his players and coaches kneeling before a Tuesday exhibition game while facing the flag for the national anthem.

When I was a boy growing up in a Reform Jewish family, the prayers spoken in temple on Shabbat included one that translated thus: “Unto Thee alone every knee must bend and every tongue give homage.” In that context, to kneel is to humble oneself before a greater power, as indeed do church congregations around the world.

Two Scientific American writers, Jeremy Adam Smith and Dacher Keltner (whose surname is also that of the infielder who helped stop Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak), once observed that first-glance research indicated “nothing threatening about kneeling.”

Instead, kneeling is almost always deployed as a sign of deference and respect. We once kneeled before kings and queens and altars; we kneel to ask someone to marry, or at least men did in the old days. We kneel to get down to a child’s level; we kneel to beg.

While we can’t know for sure, kneeling probably derives from a core principle in mammalian nonverbal behavior: make the body smaller and look up to show respect, esteem, and deference . . . Kneeling can also be a posture of mourning and sadness. It makes the one who kneels more vulnerable. In some situations, kneeling can be seen as a request for protection.

But kneeling during the playing of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the beginning of a sports event became a trigger of outrage when then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick did so in a gesture of protest against real police killings of real, unarmed African-American men.

The kneel before the anthem has revived in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer. It still is the kind of trigger that got Kaepernick into hot water, most recently when several San Francisco Giants including their manager did so before an exhibition game. “I see nothing more patriotic,” said Gabe Kapler to reporters, “than peaceful protests when things are frustrating and upsetting.”

During the initial outrage, a fire onto which a certain president poured gasoline by demanding publicly the firing of Kaepernick and anyone else of similar mind and gesture, it seemed too simple to see the gesture as equivalent to grinding the American flag under the heel.

Smith and Keltner noticed something to which nobody else paid much mind if at all: “[W]ith a single, graceful act, Kaepernick invested it with a double meaning. He didn’t turn his back as the anthem was played, which would have been a true sign of disrespect. Nor did he rely on the now-conventionalized black-power fist.”

The fist first raised in tandem by Olympic gold medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Games, even as both men kept their heads bowed on the medal podium. And a thought is provoked: Would those screaming bloody murder over a knee taken during “The Star Spangled Banner” prefer the raised clenched fist as a protest? A flag burning on the field? A riot, with or without looting and plundering included?

Of course they wouldn’t. Neither would you. Neither would I. We should acknowledge  that the Giants didn’t turn their backs as “The Star-Spangled Banner” played, either. Neither did Joey Votto and several fellow kneeling Cincinnati Reds teammates before an exhibition against the Detroit Tigers. It’s not impossible to consider that a gesture of quiet protest before the anthem and the flag is not the exactly same thing as a protest against the anthem or the flag.

You’re not required to subscribe to every last clause of the social-justice-warrior’s indictments to concur that rogue police attacking if not killing black people is not what the land of the free and the home of the brave is supposed to acknowledge or support. But you’re not out of line, either, if you want to say that perhaps the time is long enough due to re-consider whether playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” before every last sporting event everywhere renders it meaningless.

“By choosing to make standing for the anthem a matter of coercion rather than a voluntary act of patriotism,” wrote John Hirschauer of The Daily Wire—a conservative news and opinion Website— at that time, “it (quite wrongly) suggests that (sports) executives and the kneeling movement’s many malcontents in the country are unable to provide a coherent reason why America is worth honoring in spite of its flaws. Worse, it furthers the very narrative that drives protests like Kaepernick: The established authorities are afraid of the message they bear, and it is the established authorities’ ill-reception of this message that perpetuates the ‘systemic racism’ that threatens the lives of black men in America.”

“Saying that simply kneeling for the national anthem is so offensive that it must be confined to the locker room or banned outright,” wrote Robby Soave of Reason around the same time, “reflects the same hypersensitivity that plagues the social justice left.”

I don’t write all this lightly. I’m an Air Force veteran and the paternal grandson of a New York police officer who would have been appalled at rogue cops doing murder. I’m only too well versed in the knowledge that there are and have been countries too abundant where citizen patriotism is coerced upon the merest occasion and to the point of promising death to those who resist the coercion.

And I continue to wonder as I wondered originally: What’s the big deal? Why on earth does the national anthem need to be played before every game, match, race in creation? Doesn’t that really render the anthem meaningless? If we can (should) agree patriotism properly defined must come from the heart and not from external pressure, what should be done in this instance? My answer is the same as two years ago at first, and last year in the revisiting.

Stop playing the anthem before every last event every time.

Save it for the games, races, matches that coincide with genuine national holidays such as (thinking from today forward) Labour Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, Presidents Day, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Flag Day, the Fourth of July.

Save it, too, for the truly significant games, races, matches: Opening Day games, the Super Bowl, Game One of the NBA Finals, the WNBA Finals, Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals (assuming they begin in the American team’s arena), the Indianapolis and Daytona 500 races, the Kentucky Derby, the Belmont Stakes (if the race will indeed crown a Triple Crown winner), Day One of the Masters Tournament, each sports league’s All-Star Game, the MLS Cup Championship Game (Major League Soccer), Games One and (if there is one, as last year) Seven of the World Series.

If nothing else, you’ll have far fewer times to trouble yourself over players kneeling during the anthem’s playing for this or that protest. You’d also remove a sufficient coercive weight from the patriotic impulse that now makes the anthem too much a matter of habit and not enough a parcel of the heart.

As major league baseball’s coronavirus-delayed Opening Day is about to begin as I write, be reminded gently that, before you fume, froth, or flame over any players in tonight’s games taking a knee as “The Star-Spangled Banner” plays, they could exercise far, far more destructive ways to protest a wrong or make a point against it. As too many among us do.

The Dodgers bet on Betts

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2020-07-23 MookieBetts

Mookie Betts has 396 million reasons to smile big, and the Dodgers aren’t exactly complaining, either.

On the threshold of the Show’s coronavirus-compelled truncated regular season, the Los Angeles Dodgers—whose 2020 payroll, however pro-rated, is higher than all other teams except a certain one out of the south Bronx—proved they still have the ability to surprise and shock. They’ve made just made Mookie Betts the second-richest player in baseball, behind only a guy down the freeway named Mike Trout.

Last year, after Bryce Harper signed his thirteen-year/$330 million deal with the Philadelphia Phillies, the Los Angeles Angels saw and raised, signing Trout to twelve years and $426 million. Betts gets the twelve years and $396 million. Like Harper and Trout, Betts will be in one place for the rest of his playing career, something both those players wanted when all was said and done.

What a difference 45 years makes.

At 1974’s end, Hall of Fame pitcher Catfish Hunter—made a free agent after Oakland Athletics owner Charlie Finley reneged on a contracted-for insurance payment, thus voiding Hunter’s contract—showed fellow players what a truly free market for their services could bring. The following season, the Dodgers’ best righthanded pitcher refused to sign any contract no matter how lucrative that didn’t include a no-trade clause.

After their then-general manager (Al Campanis) injected personal matters into their talks, the pitcher refused to talk to anyone lower than then-president Peter O’Malley. O’Malley wouldn’t even think about the no-trade clause, either. Andy Messersmith said, essentially, “That’s what you think.”

He pitched 1975 without signing a deal, despite the Dodgers swelling the dollars offered. Then-players union executive director Marvin Miller enlisted fellow pitcher Dave McNally, planning to retire but technically unsigned, just in case Messersmith might waver. Messersmith stayed the course and, that December, finished successfully what Curt Flood started unforgettably but unsuccessfully.

Today’s Dodgers are owned by a group to whom spending top to bottom is no allergy. And, to whom securing top-of-the-line talent is no vice no matter how much money they might save otherwise. Like Harper and Trout, Betts’s new gigadeal lacks opt-out clauses. It also lacks a no-trade clause, but Betts probably isn’t worried and the Dodgers didn’t exactly flinch: he’d have ten years’ major league time after the fifth year of his new deal finishes, giving him full no-trade protection automatically.

“And if he is traded,” writes Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, “his deferrals will be converted into present-day dollars, creating even greater financial value in the deal.” His deferrals are $115 million of the total dollars. His up-front $65 million signing bonus, Rosenthal says, “offers greater tax benefits for him as a non-California resident than regular salary and also helps protect him from the possible lingering effects of the pandemic in ’21 and threat of a lockout in ’22. His $17.5 million salaries in both those seasons will be far below his [average annual value], so he will have less to lose.”

Betts became a Dodger, of course, in last winter’s trade sending him and pitcher David Price from the Boston Red Sox, who gained outfielder Alex Verdugo, infield prospect Jeter Downs, and minor-league catcher Connor Wong in return. Betts and Price were part of the team that beat the Dodgers in five games in the 2018 World Series, though Betts had a very modest Series at the plate while Price started and beat them twice in the set. Call it compelling them to join you if you couldn’t beat them.

Different though things are between 1975 and today, the Dodgers generally still prefer shorter-term deals, Rosenthal observes, but this time around the shorter term wasn’t the more attractive one.

The financial strain created by the pandemic for 2020 and possibly ’21, however, made a lucrative short-term extension with Betts — say, two years, $90 million — far less appealing than it might have been before the game shut down in March.

Extending the term to 12 years allowed the Dodgers to keep Betts’ average annual value to $30.4 million, a big number, to be sure, but more than $5 million below Mike Trout’s AAV and even a few hundred thousand below Clayton Kershaw’s. The Dodgers almost certainly would have needed to go to a higher AAV if they had extended Betts in March; the Angels awarded third baseman Anthony Rendon a $35 million average in a seven-year free-agent deal last offseason. Betts’ lower AAV will benefit L.A. under the game’s current competitive-balance tax system, which might be altered in the next collective-bargaining agreement.

So what do the Dodgers get? Betts at this writing is 27 and even the Dodgers don’t expect him to be today’s Betts in ten years, never mind the final two years of the deal. Let’s compare Betts, then, to Harper, Trout, and San Diego’s Manny Machado, baseball’s fourth $300 million plus man who signed for that lucre last year as well.

I’m going to use my real batting average (RBA) metric, removing sacrifice bunts from the equation because, after further thought about it, I don’t think players should be credited for gifting outs to the other guys. Even if I think their managers ought to be credited even less for ordering the gifts no matter the intentions.

The traditional batting average still makes the old school swoon even though they know that a guy who hit .303 lifetime isn’t necessarily better than the guy who hit .302 lifetime. (The former is Pete Rose’s lifetime batting average; the latter, Willie Mays’s. Let’s set a lineup of Roses against a lineup of Mayses and see which lineup puts more runs on the scoreboard.) It also divides hits by official at-bats and treats every hit equally. Do you really need me to ask you what’s missing from official at-bats or tell you not every hit is equal?

My RBA metric takes total bases (which does treat each hit individually and by its actual value), walks, intentional walks (you damn well should get credit when the other guys would rather you take your base than their heads off), sacrifice flies (they’re not premeditated outs and they put runs across the plate), and hit by pitches. (They want to drill you, let it be on their heads and to your credit.) Add them, then divide by total plate appearances.

Here, then, are the $300+ Million Dollar Quartet:

Player PA TB BB IBB SF HBP RBA
Manny Machado 4,735 2,081 361 37 32 21 .535
Mookie Betts 3,629 1,663 371 25 32 19 .581
Bryce Harper 4,639 1,985 684 81 38 29 .607
Mike Trout 5,273 2,522 803 100 48 81 .674

You knew Mike Trout was the best in the business at this writing, of course, but did you really think he was that far off the charts? You knew Bryce Harper was talented, controversial, and often got hammered because of his inconsistent traditional batting averages, but did you stop to think that he was that much better than his critics have him?

Mookie Betts doesn’t look quite as good as those two because, batting at the absolute top of the order, he doesn’t get as many chances to drive in runs and won’t get as many intentional walks—unless, in this Mad Hatter of a pandemic-shortened season, he just so happens to be the scheduled leadoff hitter in an extra inning for which his team (and every team) gets a free man on second to open the inning.

If you think the other guys are going to let Betts destroy them on the spot (58 of his career 139 home runs have been hit leading off a game or an inning) instead of putting him on to set up a double play right out of the chute, think again. Hard. Especially if it’s the bottom of the extra inning.

Betts also isn’t that sharp when it comes to walks. He’s averaged 76 a season, which isn’t terrible, and is better than Machado’s 54. But it’s not Harper’s 102 or Trout’s 108. A middle-of-the-order man’s team can afford 54 walks a season; a leadoff man’s team needs him to be a lot more selective at the plate and not be afraid to take more walks because his number one job is getting his ass on base by hook, crook, and anything else he can think of.

The Dodgers have time to work with Betts on such things and others. They’ve also looked to the post-pandemic future and decided Betts is that important to their successes to come. They’ve also put a little more pressure on several teams to think long-term about their more obvious top men. Even if those men may not command quite the length and dollars of Betts, Harper, Machado, and Trout.

The Phillies, who have Harper locked in long, must be thinking a little harder about J.T. Realmuto. The Arizona Diamondbacks may start thinking likewise about Ketel Marte, if not now then not too long from now, assuming Marte continues what last year’s breakout began. The Houston Astros may now be thinking harder about George Springer, who also hits the open market at this season’s finish. Baseball’s financial health is better than the owners like to admit, and the time to make those men wealthy and their teams a bit more secure on the field approaches fast.

When the Red Sox dealt Betts and Price to Los Angeles, Betts was vocal enough about pondering his chances on the open market after this season. That was before the coronavirus world tour turned life in general and major league baseball in particular into something between The Twilight Zone and the Mad Hatter’s tea party. At least Betts doesn’t have to scratch his head because this time there really was tea in the cup.

Traintime

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You don’t have to be a Houston Astros fan to appreciate a few of Minute Maid Park’s charms and quirks. (Perhaps an Astro fan will tell me how good Torchy’s Tacos are.) Especially the train that gets a-rollin’ whenever an Astro hits a home run. USA Today photographer Troy Taormina has provided a view for anyone not seated in the appropriate spot at the place:

2020-07-19 MinuteMaidParkTrain

Notice Taormina took that shot on a day the Astros just so happened to be hosting the New York Yankees. Be reminded, too, that Yankee Stadium ancient and modern alike have one thing the Astros lack: an honest-to-God working train behind their stately playpen:

2020-07-19 YankeeStadium

What you see behind the stadium is, of course, the elevated No. 4 rapid transit train, running down River Avenue past its turnaway point from Jerome Avenue; and, the 161st Street station whose platform begins behind the right field seats. Essentially, the Yankees (with a lot of help from New York taxpayers) built the new yard across the street from the old yard:

2020-07-19 YankeeStadiums

The original Yankee Stadium got a major facelift and re-make in 1974-75, which—considering the eventual full flowering of George Steinbrenner’s outsized King-of-Hearts-style rule—prompted assorted wags to say the stadium born as the House That Ruth Built was now the House That Ruthless Rebuilt. The train kept a-rollin’ all night and day long.

But the facelift/re-make robbed baseball fans awaiting the next 4 train of a singular pleasure. Even if you weren’t a Yankee fan you appreciated being able to see much of a game from the southmost platform of the 161st Street station from above and slightly beyond the rear end of the center field bleachers:

2020-07-19 YankeeStadiumTheFirst

I am native to the Bronx and, after my parents moved us to Long Island, I spent many a school break or weekend visiting my maternal grandparents, who were confident and kind enough to give me the run of the city. There’s no false modesty involved when I say that in those years I may have known the New York City elevateds and subways better than a lot of their own motormen did.

If I knew the Yankees were home, I’d take that 4 train (it stopped at Kingsbridge Road, crossing the train’s Jerome Avenue span, which was only a short walk to Grandma and Grandpa’s apartment) to 161st street, move to the platform’s southmost end, and watch for the chance that the Yankees would get their tails kicked from one end of the Bronx to the other.

The trouble for Yankee fans was that, at the time I began turning the city into my personal playground (New York was considerably different in my youth), the odds of the Yankees getting their tails kicked were extremely favourable. In 1966, my own father died, and so did the old imperial Yankees at last. They accomplished something unseen of them since the year the Titanic lost its heavyweight bout against the iceberg: they finished dead last in the American League.

Most of us Met fans since the day they were born couldn’t resist thinking what an absolute bitch karma could be when in the mood. This Met fan couldn’t resist reminding himself of what more knowledgeable observers knew: the remaining Yankee stars were aging (Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Roger Maris, Elston Howard), consistently injured (Jim Bouton), or both (Mantle and Ford); and, the Yankee farm system—except for a small handful of promises who turned out journeymen for assorted reasons (injuries, attitudes)—was suddenly as fertile as the Sahara Desert.

This Met fan since the day they were born also had his first taste of live major league baseball in that ancient, rambling wreck known as the Polo Grounds. The trains rolled behind the Polo Grounds, too, once upon a time. Sort of.

2020-07-19 PoloGrounds

What you see behind and to the right of the far right field stands is the station of the ancient Ninth Avenue El. Above and behind the center field bleachers and clubhouse/office building structure is the portion that survived to be the Polo Grounds Shuttle—until it wasn’t. To the left of the left field stands was the subway yard; as the masthead of this journal shows, you could see trains reposing between the ballpark and the main yard through the rear of the lower deck seats.

New York closed the shuttle in 1958. The underground 158th Street station on the B and D lines of the IND system beneath remain alive today. The Polo Grounds, of course, doesn’t. The Mets played there in 1962 and 1963 until Shea Stadium opened. By the time Grandpa Morris took me to my first Mets game in 1962, the subway yard was long succeeded by a group of apartment buildings and the Ninth Avenue El was ancient history.

The trains didn’t keep a-rollin’ but the Mets did. “Rollin'” was a polite way to put it. The 1962-63 Mets were baseball’s number one comedy troupe. They made Ernie Kovacs’s television surrealism resemble Norman Rockwell. They had Who’s on first, What’s on second, You Didn’t Want To Know’s on third, and You Were Afraid to Ask at shortstop.

The number 7 elevated went right behind Shea Stadium on the right field side and stops at the same station, Willets Point, to take Met fans to Citi Field. The major difference is that you can’t see the train from the Citi Field stands as you could in Shea Stadium. Which made interesting viewing when you arrived early for a game or another event.

2020-07-19 BakerBowl

Philadelphia’s Baker Bowl. Note the subway yard across the street behind the right field wall. Note, too, the wall lacks the team endorsement for a deodorant soap augmented memorably by a disgruntled Phillies fan in the 1930s . . .

For a very long time the Broad Street Line in Philadelphia rumbled within reach of Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium, and runs adjacent to Citizens Bank Park today. Once upon a time, however, the Phillies played in Baker Bowl, and that box of pain (except to Chuck Klein, lefthanded power hitter) sat across the street from a subway yard on the right field wall side. (The legend continues about the disgruntled 1930s fan who took paint to a team endorsement for a certain deodorant soap on the right field wall: “The Phillies use Lifebuoy! . . . and they still stink!“)

The Union Pacific’s Phoenix line passes Chase Field in Arizona. The Metro Blue and Green lines took you to the Metrodome in Minneapolis, if you dared. Navy Yard-Ballpark Station takes you to Nationals Park on the Green Line, but the station’s underground. What’s the fun in that?

The good news if you’re going to Wrigley Field: you get to take the elevated Red Line, and the Addison Street station is a very short walk (about half a city block) from the yard. The bad news: You can’t see the trains from the ballpark. Those houses on Sheffield and Waveland block almost all your views even without the latter-day rooftop bleachers.

It’s not that you go to a baseball game to watch the trains, though if your team is busy getting clobbered on the field that day the trains make for a nice diversion. In Minute Maid Park you need a home run to see the train roll, but at assorted parks past and present the trains kept a-rollin’ all night and day long. Until they didn’t.

2027-07-19 AstrodomeWithColtStadium

An aerial view of Colt Stadium (foreground) adjacent to the newly-opened Astrodome in Houston. The trains didn’t roll to or past them but the cars rolled in and out. In Colt Stadium, alas, so did the mosquitoes.

I’m sure I left a couple of parks out of this survey, but at least Astro fans get a train in the ballpark now. Once upon a time, you got to either Colt Stadium (outdoors) or the Astrodome (The world’s biggest hair dryer—Joe Pepitone, Yankee turned Astro) by motor vehicle. Unless you happened to own a helicopter and were related to a nearby landowner.

If it was Colt Stadium, you had to carry something only slightly more important than hand sanitizer, alas. “This is the only park in the league,” said Hall of Fame outfielder Richie Ashburn, winding his career down as an Original Met in the year that birthed the Mets and the Astros-to-be (born the Colt .45s), “where the women wear insect repellant instead of perfume.”

A virus, a prayer, a return for Freeman

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2020-07-19 FreddieFreeman

“I said, ‘Please don’t take me,’ because I wasn’t ready.”—Atlanta Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman, describing the worst night of his COVID-19 battle.

These days it’s fair to suggest first baseman Freddie Freeman is the face of the Atlanta Braves. He’s had a solid career thus far and— assuming baseball and American life re-discover normalcy if and when the coronavirus world tour finally dissipates—it’s safe to assume he’ll continue that way when healthy.

He’s had a few seasons interrupted by injuries and one truncated season-to-be interrupted rudely by COVID-19 itself. It was enough to make him thankful for his recovered health and the small things, considering the shake he incurred while suffering with the illness.

When baseball began its “summer camp” version of delayed spring training, Freeman was one of four Braves to test positive for the coronavirus. Pitcher Touki Toussaint showed no symptoms, though, and returned to the Braves on Friday. The other two—lefthanded relief pitcher Will Smith and utility infielder Pete Kozma—haven’t returned yet.

And, there came one point where Freeman feared he’d go from incumbent Brave to dead duck. That was the day his fever spiked to 104.5, usually the level at which you’d also suffer pneumonia. (Fair disclosure: your servant has fought and beaten pneumonia twice in his adult life.) It also spiked him into prayer.

“I said a little prayer that night,” he told a Saturday conference call. “I’ve never been that hot before. My body was really, really hot . . . I said ‘Please don’t take me,’ because I wasn’t ready.”

Freeman’s coronavirus adventure began when—after he “tested negative on the intake” and felt “great” on 30 June—he awoke two days later in the wee small hours feeling a swarm of body aches. “I didn’t know,” he said. “It didn’t cross my mind that it was coronavirus when I woke up that morning.”

It’d cross his mind soon enough, alas.

“I went to bed late and didn’t get enough sleep,” Freeman continued. “So I took some Tylenol, some ZzzQuil and finally got back to bed. Then I woke up around 11:30 and I immediately grabbed my phone and texted my wife and said, ‘Something is wrong. I need you to bring a thermometer.’ They gunned my forehead and it said 102 fever. I looked at it and said, ‘I think I need to call George (Poulis, the Braves’ trainer). I think something is different’.”

It was. The Braves got him a medical appointment, on 3 July, and the test came back positive.

“The crazy thing is, [that] Friday morning, I woke up in a pool of sweat, gunned my forehead and it said 98.2, so I had no fever that morning,” Freeman said. “That was 7:30 in the morning. So I went to the field because I was waiting for the test, I hit, I threw, I worked out and I ran at my house and felt completely fine. By 2 p.m., it hit me like a ton of bricks. I came back and I was like ‘Wow. I’m not feeling very good.’ It just snowballed after that.”

He spiked that shivery 104.5 that night. “Thankfully, George wasn’t awake when I texted him because I probably would’ve gone to the hospital,” he said. “Ten minutes after that, I gunned my forehead again and I was 103.8, then 103.2, then 103.6. So I was like, ‘If I go above 104 again, I’ll probably have to start ringing the phone and try to figure this out.”

That’s about when Freeman began to pray. Awakening the following morning with a mere 101.5 temperature, he figured that much he could take and feel relief. That Friday night, he said, was the worst of it, if you didn’t count that it interfered with fatherhood over the week that followed.

“I’d stand up, get dizzy and I’d have to sit back down. Trying to tell my 3-year-old not to come around me was difficult,” he said. “I wore masks, gloves, I was playing cars with them. Ten minutes after playing cars with them I’d have to sit down. I was a little fatigued and tired. Then, every three hours it felt like I had to take a nap.”

A week after those first symptoms, Freeman still didn’t feel great until he had yet another nap. When he awoke, though, he felt great enough to hail his wife, Chelsea, and ask for copious carbohydrates. She obliged with some Italian food. Come Saturday morning he’d gone nine days with no further symptoms, and a lot of gratitude.

So far, no more body aches, contradictory chills, and short losses of his senses of smell and taste. While his wife and an aunt continue recovering after they, too, tested positive, Freeman returned to Truist Park after a second consecutive negative test. He said his family did everything right to avoid the virus but “it still somehow got to me.”

The Braves would love to get to him as many plate appearances as possible before the truncated regular season begins, but Freeman isn’t entirely sure just how ready he’ll be. His manager, Brian Snitker, isn’t exactly worried. “I don’t think I have to look for anything,” Snitker told reporters. “If he’s out there he’s going to be ready.”

Despite sore legs the day after a Friday workout, Freeman bopped a run-scoring triple over the head of the Braves’ face-in-training, Ronald Acuna, Jr., in Saturday’s intrasquad game. He also made an over-the-shoulder running catch of a foul pop. You’d have been hard pressed to find any Brave happier to have their first base anchorman back than Freeman himself.

“I feel like I’m a kid in a candy store again,” he told that conference. “You forget sometimes how much you love this game. I did truly miss it. I was so excited when I got to the yard.”

It didn’t come without a few painful disruptions. When outfield mainstay Nick Markakis decided to opt out of playing in 2020, Freeman in the thick of COVID-19 was a huge factor after speaking to the first baseman by telephone. “Unfortunately,” Freeman said, “that was my worst day He just wasn’t into it, and I totally, totally get it.” The followup call between the two a couple of days later totally, totally affirmed Markakis’s decision. Freeman still gets it.

Surely he also gets that his return to the Braves was a badly-needed adrenaline shot. With Markakis out of this year’s picture, the Braves took a flyer on free agent outfielder Yasiel Puig—until Puig himself tested coronavirus positive. There went that idea. And, likely, there went Puig’s 2020, until he clears the medical protocols with two consecutive negative tests.

“I am sad that this has happened,” Puig tweeted, “but I believe that everything is in God’s timing and that my return to MLB will happen in His perfect timing.” He’ll need that kind of faith now, especially, unless God has a direct advance line on which teams might turn up needing experienced outfield help after Puig recovers and stays negative.

The cliche about waking up to smell the coffee has a certain resonance with Freeman now. “It didn’t dawn on me that I lost my taste and smell until my aunt went and got me a coffee and I couldn’t taste the coffee,” he said. “So we went and grabbed barbeque sauce and I put it up to my nose and couldn’t smell anything. I tried to taste it, couldn’t taste anything. So that lasted four days. Other than that, it was just bad the first three days for me.”

Freeman will be happier when his family is back to normal and he can be ready to go come Opening Day, when the Braves open against the New York Mets in Citi Field.

“We’re going to try. That’s the whole goal, for me to be ready Opening Day,” he said. “Thankfully, it’s not like a normal spring training. We can control the games. So the whole plan, talking to (Snitker), I’m going to be getting five or six at-bats for the next five days . . . I’m trying to get potentially thirty at-bats over the next five days. I did a full workout yesterday. We’re going to take it day by day.”

Day by day. MLB’s season watchword. With no guarantee for the time being that it will proceed without further nasty surprises. At least, whether just awakening or in the mood for a cup later in the day, Freeman can smell the coffee now. In more than one way.